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dollars and forbidding anybody else to carry them for less,
although the express companies would be glad of the chance
to do the same service for sixteen dollars ; and, 2, by taking
toll from all purchasers of whiskey and tobacco at home, and
of various other articles from foreign countries.

And yet some people don't know why the thousands of
officeholders who are pulling away at the public teats are
getting fat while the people are getting poorer. In fact, some
people don't know anything at all except, as Josh Billings said,
"a grate menny things that ain't so." It is very unfortunate
that such people are intrusted with the editing of newspapers.

ERGO AND PRESTO!

[Liberty, July 7, 1888.]

In Henry George may be seen a pronounced type of the
not uncommon combination of philosopher and juggler. He
possesses in a marked degree the faculty of luminous exposition
of a fundamental principle, but this faculty he supplements
with another no less developed,—that of so obscuring
the connection between his fundamental principle and the
false applications thereof which he attempts that only a mind
accustomed to analysis can detect the flaw and the fraud. We
see this in the numerous instances in which he has made a
magnificent defence of the principle of individual liberty in
theory, only to straightway deny it in practice, while at the
same time palming off his denial upon an admiring following
as a practical affirmation. Freedom of trade is the surest
guarantee of prosperity; ergo, there must be perfect liberty of
banking; presto! there shall be no issue of money save by the
government. Here, by the sly divorce of money-issuing from
banking, he seems to justify the most ruinous of monopolies
by the principle of liberty. And this is but an abridgment of
the road by which he reaches very many of his practical
conclusions. His simplicity and clearness as a philosopher so win
the confidence of his disciples that he can successfully play
the rôle of a prestidigitator before their very eyes. They do
not notice the transformation from logic to legerdemain. For
a certain distance he proceeds carefully, surely, and
straight-forwardly by the method of ergo; and then, when the minds
of his followers are no longer on the alert, presto! he suddenly